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The Directorate
Deep in the Outer Reach, beyond the territory of the Dindrenzi state, lies the most advanced – and certainly the most sinister – human stellar dominion. This is the Directorate. The Directorate was created at the end of the first Outer Reach secession war by a consortium of immensely powerful corporations. Among them, the most powerful are Hark-Williams, Melcon and Works Raptor. They bought their political freedom from Terra in return for promising technological and economic support for the Terran government. But the treacherous corporate overlords quickly betrayed the Terrans when the second secession war broke out, backing the Dindrenzi separatists. The Directorate has enjoyed a highly profitable relationship with the Dindrenzi Federation ever since. For the Directorate however, this is just another alliance of convenience. The corporations have worked hard behind the scenes to create and inflame the new Dindrenzi war against the Terrans. The Directorate helped found the Zenian League, and even organised covert attacks on their own ‘allies’ to push them into the conflict. Their motives for all this are simple – war is good business, and to the victor go the spoils. Despite being few in number, the Directorate’s Security Fleets operate some of the most formidable warships in service. Heavily automated for maximum efficiency, Directorate ships incorporate highly advanced technology, such as cloaking fields. Directorate vessels are festooned with deadly plasma projector batteries to burn huge holes in enemy warships. But their plasma bombardments alone are only one part of the horror. The same projectors are used to ‘inject’ capsules containing lethal pathogens and chemical weaponry into shattered enemy ships to complete the devastation. Directorate Captains consider every engagement to be a live firing test for their latest weaponry. Chemical and biological torpedoes and terrifying cybernetic and gene-modified assault troops are among the many destructive tools in their arsenals. Hated and feared in equal measure, the Directorate’s fleets have acquired the darkest of reputations within the Alliance of Kurak. They come not only to destroy, but to abduct and pillage. Wherever the Directorate’s sinister, crablike ships are sighted, terror and chaos soon follow. The Directorate’s fleets are believed to be operating throughout the Storm Zone, Fathom’s Reach and beyond. Many reports have been received by Kurak Alliance military authorities of shattered colonies and ambushed convoys, often far from the active warzones. Ground wars For the Directorate, planetary asset acquisition is the zenith of capitalist opportunities. They remain, however, the most risky of ventures, and smaller companies are often made or broken on the battlefields of alien worlds. As such, Directorate invasion ships will usually allow their support ships to do the bulk of enemy clearance operations before proceeding to their insertion sites. Although their planetfall capable ships are well built, the cloned, cybernetic or robotic troops they contain are seen less as life to be protected, than assets to be properly utilised. This is aptly demonstrated in the simple Induction class Frigate, a ship closely related to the Enforcer, and owing much to its Sabulon heritage. With no offensive weapons (and thus a smaller power core), the ship has more internal strengthening, a larger point defence grid, and yet retains the same speed performance at a lower price point than the Enforcer. Against sustained or heavy fire, however, it has little protection – a shielding system on such a ship is considered too much of an investment when the bulk of its cargo are little more than murderous cloned automata. The Appropriation and Integration are somewhat different from this model, being designed to carry both command staff and more expensive ground equipment – they are thus more heavily protected and also bear reasonable weapons arrays, making them much more multi- purpose vessels than the fairly niche Induction Class. Homeworld The domain of the Directorate lies in the far galactic north-east of the Outer Reach; a fitting home for this quadrant’s most secretive and sinister major power. For the corporate chief executives life is heaven, enjoying the hedonistic pleasures of the most technologically advanced society humanity has ever built. But for everyone else, life is almost literally hell. There are no citizens in the Directorate, only human resources to be expended and sometimes destroyed on a whim. Zenia, the capital planet of the Directorate, is so secret that it appears on virtually no starcharts, situated within possibly the most heavily defended individual system in the galaxy. But Zenia itself is utterly unlike anything the few visitors who have been there expected. As is only fitting for the home of the mightiest leaders of the Directorate’s greatest corporations, it is a true paradise-world, meticulously terraformed – a gorgeous veneer masking the dark hearts of its fabulously privileged inhabitants. Example Directorate officer The Directorates Pacification Fleets are under the general auspices of the obliquely named Resource & Personnel Division, headquartered in the Keller system. In their cross-company offices, highly desirable Planetary Acquisition Tenders (so-called “PATs”) are drawn up from active Exaction Sectors and offered through the Naval Command Consortium for open bidding. Olga Anasenko is a hugely experienced Directorate leader who, at the age of 73, has participated in over 60 PATs, and her ruthless and feared style of command has earned her the moniker of the ‘Angel of Misery’. She was one of the first Directors in the Division to submit herself to augmented gene therapy to slow the ageing process, and she was also the first Directorate non-board member to have a Sinstat X86 synaptic interface fitted. The interface allows her to instantly connect to the data nets of every vessel under her command, with the X86’s 267 Gigaflop processing module directly managing all data flow, right the way back to the NCC on Carteris. Olga has created many political alliances (very few have friends at her level) in high-profile companies within the Directorate over her accrued years. Her position also makes her someone that it is highly desirable to influence – all of which she plays very astutely to her advantage, and her huge amassed personal wealth. Playing this game has earned her some very notable enemies within the Directorate, as the loss of a PAT bid can have serious and substantial repercussions on a company’s stock value. Olga herself is impassive about these threats – they are all part of the game and what makes life worth living, at least life on Zenia, where she spends at least half of her time on her personal island in the southern hemisphere. Fleet Dreadnoughts *Persecution Class Dreadnought Battleships * Judgement Class Battleship * Eliminator Class Battleship * Anarchist Class Battleship Carriers * Overseer Class Carrier * Dominance Class Carrier * Ascendency Class Escort Carrier * Integration Class Assault Carrier Cruisers * Deterrent Class Battlecruiser * Justice Class Heavy Cruiser * Subjugator Class Heavy Cruiser * Executioner Class Cruiser * Abraxas Class Cruiser * Vanquisher Class Cruiser * Tormentor Class R&D Cruiser * Turmoil Class R&D Cruiser * Annihilation Class Gunship * Champion Class Cruiser * Appropriation Class Assault Cruiser Destroyers * Nemesis Class destroyer Frigates * Enforcer Class Frigate * Liquidator Class Frigate * Impact Class Light Frigate * Induction Class Frigate Drones * Hostility Class Drone Escorts * Punisher Class Escort * Suppression Class Escort Stations * Firewall Class Battlestation * Neutralizer Class Defence Platform SRS * Directorate Short Range Spacecrafts Directorate Unreleased Models * Directorate unreleased models Category:Races Category:Zenian League Category:Corporate Category:Human Category:The Directorate